NPR News Now - NPR News: 02-28-2025 9AM EST

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

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Live from NPR News, I'm Korava Coleman. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Washington today to meet with President Trump. They're supposed to sign a framework agreement on sharing Ukraine's raw minerals with the United States. NPR's Joanna Kokissus reports from Kyiv. Zelensky is visiting the White House a little more than a week after Trump called him a dictator and repeated Kremlin talking points, including that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that started the war. Anna Kolesnik, a communications manager in Kyiv, said she's

happy the meeting is taking place but worries it could go poorly. God help us not to lose a lot, meaning our territories, our raw materials, our mines. Trump and Zelensky are set to sign a preliminary minerals deal in which the U.S. would get revenue from some of Ukraine's natural resources in exchange for future aid. Joanna Kekesis, NPR News, Cave. Today is a legal deadline set by Chief Justice John Roberts

of the U.S. Supreme Court involving a lawsuit against the Trump administration. Groups are supposed to comment on the Trump administration's move to freeze certain U.S. foreign aid funding. A lower court had ordered the Trump administration to lift its freeze and pay the bills. But NPR's Frank Langford reports the Chief Justice stepped in and moved the lower court judge's deadline to pay up to today. These are among the first cases in front of the Supreme Court that involved the president's

attempts to expand executive power. And after all, in these cases, the government had effectively refused to pay money that Congress had already appropriated and the government clearly owes, and that this judge had told it to pay. And the government says in one of its filings that it thinks the lower court exceeded its authority in doing that. And so people are watching very closely now to see how the Supreme Court responds to all of this.

NPR's Frank Langford reporting. Israel's military has admitted to failures that it says left it unable to protect the public in the October 7th, 2023 Hamas-led attack. Militants killed nearly 1,200 people and took more than 250 others hostage. This is based on new findings the Israeli military released from an internal investigation. NPR's Kat Lanzdorf reports from Tel Aviv. The investigation found that quote glaring intelligence failures had allowed senior Israeli officers to underestimate

Hamas's capability and tensions leading up to the 2023 attack. It's the military's first official account of mistakes that preceded the attack, the deadliest in Israel's history, which launched the war against Hamas in Gaza that killed more than 48,000 Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not commented on the investigation, and he has not taken responsibility for the attack, saying he will answer questions only after the war ends. Many Israelis blame Netanyahu for the failures leading to October 7th and want a wider inquiry

by the government. Kat Lansdorf, NPR News, Tel Aviv. This is NPR. Some social conservatives are applauding the Trump administration's directive to prioritize transportation funding for communities with high marriage and birth rates. From Member Station WFAE, Steve Harrison reports. The U.S. Department of Transportation says considering birth and marriage rates will, quote, support economic development and strengthen American families. But attorney Kim Meyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center, who often focuses on transportation, says the new funding criteria don't make

sense. Especially the focus on marriage, which she says is... A cultural choice, potentially a religious choice, that has absolutely nothing to do with whether you need to get around to work and to the store and take your kid to school. Some transportation experts worry that many Democratic-run cities that have lower birth rates could lose funding. For NPR News, I'm Steve Harrison in Charlotte. There have been huge protests in Greece today for railroad safety.

Hundreds of thousands of Greeks are out in many cities to observe the second anniversary of the country's deadliest train disaster. Fifty-seven people died when a passenger train collided with a freight train. An inquiry says that safety issues still have not been solved, and a Greek judicial investigation is incomplete. Former Soviet chess champion Boris Spassky has died at the age of 88 according to the International Chess Federation. Spassky lost his world chess champion title to American Bobby Fischer in a famous 1972

match. This is NPR.